the proof is in the eating

summer vacation

After parting ways with my family, A and I took a train from Bordeaux to Paris and then Paris to Brussels. Honestly, at this point we were pretty wiped out from traveling. Also, while in France, the sun riled up my eczema and I had contact dermatitis to some sunscreen and then got a heat rash. So we resolved to take it pretty easy in Brussels. We saw a few museums (we’re both suckers for a good natural history museum), sat in cafes, and ate tons of chocolate. There isn’t a lot to recap here, so I’m leaving you with a bunch of pictures.

Since we were in Belgium it seemed like the perfect time to do some comparison chocolate eating. Our favorite was Elisabeth Chocolatier. It’s maybe mid-tier, so somewhat affordable. The chocolate is exceptional. The flavors are varied and interesting. Plus, it features chocolate and confections from local artisans.

We took the train from Amsterdam to Paris to meet up with my family. The high speed trains a pretty comfy, although the tickets we got ended up putting us in a weird private car across from another couple. You can’t even look out the window. I tried very much to just focus on a book. They ate snacks very loudly.

Once in Paris, we walked around quite a bit. Saw the Eiffel tower from afar, saw the Louvre courtyard. It was still blindingly sunny and distressingly hot. Which meant many shade breaks and stopping in cafes for fortifying sugary snacks.

The plan was to be in Paris for one night and then take the train to Bordeaux the next day. But then, it turned out that the train was cancelled due to some electrical failures. My mom spent a long time in discussion with the hotel concierge, and then we ended up in a chartered van, driving 7 or so hours to meet the barge for our river cruise. It’s not really travel unless something goes awry, is it?

We spent a week on the barge cruising along the Canal de Garonne with little day trips to see the surrounding countryside. There were fields upon fields of sunflowers everywhere we went. In the evenings, we had amazing meals prepared by the owner of the boat who has been honing his culinary talents for the last ten years.

It was luxurious and ridiculous (in a good way) and not something A and I could have ever done ourselves. We got to drink a good amount of wine. I learned some things about wine-making and armangnac distillation. We got to pet a bunch of goats. And, of course, I got to spend a lot of time with my family (it’s pretty difficult to wrangle all of us together at once).

I also now have someone who is willing to send me delicious recipes. Admittedly they are all in French, but that’s what Google translate is for.

Long overdue travelogue, but better late than never and all that. Or something. The main issue with waiting for so long before putting any words down about it is that I then have to piece together stuff because I’ve forgotten a lot of it. Or maybe that’s a good thing because then there isn’t as much minutiae, and there are more pictures. Picture me shrugging here.

At the end of July, A and I went on a trip to Europe. This trip was two years or so in the planning by my mother — she wanted a way to wrangle my family altogether and finally found a week that worked, so she booked a barge cruise in France. Since it’s been years since A and I have traveled somewhere else alone together, we decided to extend the the trip fore and aft. A had never been to Europe before, but didn’t have particular feelings about places to go. And I have been to Europe before, and wanted to go to Amsterdam and Brussels. So we started off in Amsterdam.

View while walking the first morning before most of the city was awake.

We spent a good amount of time just wandering around. Neither A nor I feel strongly about seeing all the sights or doing all the things; we tend to like to just be in a place. See a couple of things. And then eat a lot of food. So we were both perfectly content to spend most of our days walking about.

Except.

Apparently we showed up during an unseasonable heatwave. Most of the friendly locals kept commenting to us about how uncharacteristically hot it was. To which we, with sweat dripping off every surface, would reply, “Huh. You don’t say.”

Except we didn’t say that because neither of us say things like “You don’t say.”

Instead, we had to limit some of of sojourns so that we didn’t melt like butter in a hot cast iron pan.

Sidestreets and a crooked house.

The first full day that we had in Amsterdam was also the day of our tattoos at Ink District Amsterdam. We strolled along some of the canal streets in the morning, had some Dutch pancakes (fittingly at a place called PANCAKES), hit up the Amsterdam museum, and then went and got our ink.

The next day, we went to Micropia, which is an exceptionally well done museum about microbes. There were microscopes all over the place, bubbly flasks, and a stamp scavenger hunt. There was also a huge tardigrade in the lobby.

An even more crooked house. No one seemed alarmed.

On our last evening in Amsterdam, we decided to have some Dutch food, so we went to Greetje which was around the corner and down the street from our hotel. We decided on the tasting menu because why not try all the things? It was ostensibly three courses, but much more like 17 courses. The starter is a “tasting” of all six of their starters, there was a main, and then the dessert was a “tasting” of all eight of their desserts (they have a pretty generous definition of “tasting,” generous and delicious). And that’s not including the bread and amuse. Or the coffee that came with butter cake. We basically had to roll our way home. If you’re ever in Amsterdam, I highly, highly recommend checking this place out. All the food was wonderful.

I managed to snap a pic of the starters and the desserts, both served “high tea” style. I ate the bread, my amuse, and my main before I thought to snap pics of those.

The view from our table at our last dinner in Amsterdam.

The next day, we were on our way to France. I wish we had had more time in Amsterdam. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll be able to go again. Preferably not at the height of summer…